I'm sure there are nuances but according to this particular source European life expectancy went from 75 to 79, US life expectancy went from 78 to 79 with a period of a decline between 2013 and 2018.
The decline in US life expectancy is more complex than a general reduction in quality of life, and mostly unrelated to the US financial culture to leads to unicorns. The American ideal of huge companies that must take over the entire market can be traced at least all the way back to the railway robber barons, and has existed even during periods of immense growth in life expectancy.
At the same time, a lot of the increase in life expectancy in the EU is due to improvements in medicine that are significantly driven by US-funded research.
Why do you think that actions of these huge institutions are not impactful to the life quality of the Americans?
Also, why do you think that the European live longer thanks to the medicine developed in the USA? Maybe the USA develops medicine thanks to the free and equal opportunity education culture in the Europe? If you look closely to the researchers, you will see that lot's of the people who develop these things have European roots and by roots I don't mean their grandpa was Irish, I mean they were educated in Europe and it just happens that the organisation that develops these drugs is incorporated in the USA.
The tech revolution that changed the world was also developed in Europe, the web was developed by the British in EU institution, Linux was made by a Finnish guy called Linus, Nginx is Russian-made.
Also, we are at a verge of AI revolution and some of the leading researchers are Europe educated people. Just check the bio of the top researchers who were instrumental at Tesla or OpenAI.
Maybe the USA is just the industrial zone of Europe? Maybe the US appears rich and acts poor simply because because the richness comes from the accounting choices? Just kidding of course, the USA is a superpower and is actually rich thanks to many things like its abundant resources and brilliant people but the notion that the Europe is doing better because they just drink smoothies and meditate all day on the American resources and innovation is ridiculous.
I would love for this to be true. Europeans do seem to enjoy a higher quality of life among several axis.
However the US subsidizes European defense (refer to current events) allowing European countries to spend less GDP on their military.
Talent comes to the US from all over the world. That's how it works and has since almost the beginning of the country.
Easier access to capital (and easy bankruptcy, etc), entrepreneurial mindset (less Tall Poppy syndrome), etc etc means business is generally easier in US.
Linus moved to the US. The web was possible bc the internet was funded by the US (arpanet, etc).
Europeans enjoy the Pax Americana without paying tribute to the Amerian empire.
Maybe the US is spending so much in defence in it's own interests? Maybe that's how US can enforce business benefits like copyrights to the American corporations and business decisions on what other countries can invest into? Maybe that's why US can print USD at will but other countries have to earn it?
But I like the Linus argument, however this complicates things further: Are tech becoming European when the tech CEO's are having a vacation in the French riviera?
The American military is paid for by debt. The US can only take on this debt because they have the world’s reserve currency. It’s essentially a flat tax on the rest of the world.
Subsidizes????? You mean selling weapons at highly inflated prices benefitting the US economy while eroding Europes industrial base? Not to forget that Europe and Taiwan supplies many of the sub-systems used in US weapons. The Abraham main battle tank gun is German for example.
I don't think most of what you wrote, almost phrase by phrase. You took an extreme version of what I said and rebutted it. Just because I said that the US had major influence in European medicine and life expectancy, you took it as meaning that Europeans are bad scientists and "just drink smoothies". I think nothing of this sort.
It's very safe to say that US-originated science had a major influence in life expectancy worldwide, including Europe. What's so controversial about it? The increase in life expectancy in Europe, then, was "significantly" influenced by US innovations.
Of course US "originated" science had influence, just like Russia originated one or Korea originated one. Also, Science is not something you dig from the ground to claim it’s origins. Depending on what you want to claim, you can change your definition. You can claim that we are having it so good thanks to the German science from the 1940s. Pick a cut off date and ownership method to suit your argument needs.
> At the same time, a lot of the increase in life expectancy in the EU is due to improvements in medicine that are significantly driven by US-funded research.
Frankly, I don't believe it's true, for two reasons. First, the European Big Pharma is quite strong. It would be more fair - but not precise - to say the rest of the world benefits from the advances made in the West.
As for the second point, it was succinctly put by Dr. Marcia Angell from The New England Journal of Medicine in her famous book. From the blurb: "Drug companies, she shows, routinely rely on publicly funded institutions for their basic research; they rig clinical trials to make their products look better than they are; and they use their legions of lawyers to stretch out government-granted exclusive marketing rights for years. They also flood the market with copycat drugs that cost a lot more than the drugs they mimic but are no more effective."
If the US is funding the research, what is it about the US political system which prevents Americans from enjoying those same gains?
I suggest that perhaps it’s a difference in perspective on rights. In Europe, there is a positive right to healthcare. In the US, there is no such right apart from certain circumstances. We turn our nose up at “handouts”. The US expects the free market to handle it instead, which it has. This has led to large portions of the country with few doctors and even fewer affordable ones.
Research mostly done by underpaid researchers from China, India and Europe coming to the US in the hope to get a better life. The whole system is complex.
This has come up before (searching for ref) but the basic explanation is GDP when adjusted for PPP in eurozone is more or less same as USA over that period (ie both economies grew at much same rate).
Basically things in America got more expensive (gas, health, education being big contributors). There is lots of wriggle room in the numbers but the vast gulf by nominal GDP is surprising and so unlikely .
It's probably a very complex thing and both sides of the discussion can pick something to attribute for. For example, you can say that it's because of the opioid crisis in the USA and pretend that it's happening in isolation - just some bad actors doing bad things that don't have anything to do with anything else.
Hong Kong has one of the highest life expectancy of the world and a major contributing factor is high population density. Paramedics are able (and must) arrive within 12 minutes of an emergency call, which is probably the most important time to keep people alive. Doesn't mean Hong Kong is a decent place to live though.
USA: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life...
I'm sure there are nuances but according to this particular source European life expectancy went from 75 to 79, US life expectancy went from 78 to 79 with a period of a decline between 2013 and 2018.